Florence

1. Ate gelato every day (the secret weapon the Romans used to expand their empire).

2. Saw the Duomo, Santa Maria Novela, Santo Espirito, San Marco, and other famous and semi-famous places of religious importance. The Santa Maria Novela and the Santo Espirito churches contain pretty much the exact same architecture. But for some reason the Santa Maria was deem of more importance, because eventually someone decided the entire front face of that church get covered in marble. All of the churches in Florence were originally built without elaborate decoration on the exterior. Like Santa Maria Novela, the Duomo was also deemed important enough to recive decoration on it´s exterior (there is no wonder why, the Duomo is pretty sweet), but much more elaborate.

3. Saw original bronze Persius, original David, Cosimo 1 as Roman emporor, Fat Guy Riding Turtle, and other famous statues. The broze statue of Persius holding Medusa´s head, by Celini, was, and still is, considered a triumph in sculpting. The story of how Celini did it, and what it took is pretty amazing. In the process he got very sick, he almost died, and he almost burned his workshop down. Look into it.

4. Went to the Ufizi, Academia, Piti Palace, Galileo exhibit, Ponte Vecciho bridge, Piaza de Michelangelo and other cool places. At the Galileo exhibit we were albe to see one of his fingers, two of his telescopes, one of his diaries, some of his logs, a few other of his belongings, and tons of other really cool artifacts having to with astronomy and astrology. Galileo´s invention of the telescope has proved very important to civilation today. Using his telescope, Galileo was able to see the moon up close, and even map it out. He was also able to prove Copernicus´ theory that the earth actually isn´t actually the center of the universe, the sun is. After he was able to prove that, all hell broke lose. Thuse started God vs. Science, an incredibly stupid war, as are all wars.

5. Ate real Gnocci (Taylor and I tried to make some a few months ago. Disaster. These were good. Real good).

Sorry there are no picutres. I´m staying at a hostel in Granada, Spain now, and I have no way to load them onto the computer. I´ll try to figure something out soon though.